Why is Now | Peter Mehit

We have worked with thousands of startups, ranging from brick and mortar businesses, to mobile apps, to internet portals to medical devices, special materials and, literally, cancer cures. Each one of these clients brought a different level of sophistication. Each had different ideas about where they were going. While nearly all them had a sense of what needed to be done, most were light on the how and especially the why.

When visualizing your goal, why you are doing it the most important part. It provides the motive energy to keep you on track and, more importantly, energized as you travel toward it. There are two parts to why: the practical (or rational) reason (I need to raise a million dollars, I want to bring a new foodie app to the market) and the emotional reason (I will feel good when my customers succeed, I will feel secure when I have money). There are always two pieces to why. One that involves a concrete objective that is usually external to you and one that is all about you.

People worship Steve Jobs. I know it’s sacrilegious to suggest that his primary motivation was his own ego, that he wasn’t a very nice person, but let’s face it: this is a man that worked his teams so hard that one of them committed suicide in his office during the Newton project. Let’s also face something else: That motive energy, to be the absolute best, regardless of the cost, was sufficient to lift him to become one of the most prominent innovators the world has ever seen.

Bill Bartman, who has made (and lost) millions of dollars multiple times, has said that it doesn’t matter what motivates you, positive or negative, as long as it’s sufficient. He was motivated to make those millions of dollars because his sister-in-law told his bride he wouldn’t amount to anything.

I would add that it’s sufficient if it gets you through now. By now, I mean when payroll is coming and you’re short. When there isn’t a customer in sight and you have staff wondering what to do. When you’ve walked out of your tenth pitch with out a check. Why has to motivate you past NOW.

It’s all sunshine and rainbows to have vision statements about ‘being the best’ and ‘exceeding expectations’ but what is really motivating you. That is your test. To reach inside yourself and understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. We started our business so I would never have a performance review again. We fought through the Great Recession, when getting a job would have been easier, because of our why.

It doesn’t matter what motivates you as long as you know exactly what it is. It doesn’t have to be in your mission statement, but it has to be meaningful to you and it has to get you through now.

Let us help you apply your why to your goals, join us for:

NOW – NEXT – DONE

The simple, easy, fun way to achieve any goal

In this two hour seminar, you will learn a skill that will last a lifetime and will help you be better at any job or in running your own business. The next seminar is coming up on 10-03-18 at 6:00 pm at our offices at 1800 E. Garry Avenue, Suite 102. Click HERE to learn more about it.